Portable "Sky Deck" Turns Your Fire Escape into a Terrace

For many apartment dwellers, the fire escape is the de facto balcony. To make it a nicer place to hang out, Torafu Architects created Sky-Deck, a clever, minimalist, and portable way to add a small table to any railing.

Made of wood, Sky-Deck is manufactured by the Ishinomaki Laboratory, established to help reconstruct the city of Ishinomaki, devastated by the March 2011 tsunami. A swinging arm holds the setup in place. It's not much, but it's big enough to hold a beer or a cocktail, making a fire escape, or any space with a railing but no furniture, into a pleasant terrace.

Torafu puts it nicely: "Floating in the air, sky deck stretches a narrow balcony space out by just a little bit, into the city beyond."